Environmental factors affect the risk of dry eye syndrome in a United States veteran population

摘要

Dry eye syndrome (DES) is a prevalent condition whose manifestations negatively affect physical and mental functioning. Understanding which risk factors associate with DES is important because this information can augment our understanding of disease pathogenesis. Several environmental factors have been suggested to impact DES, including high altitude, wind, and air pollution. Despite these data, there is an important knowledge gap on how environmental factors (especially air pollution coupled with weather conditions) affect the frequency of DES in the United States. The study of environmental factors is challenging because it requires integration of both location-based health data and corresponding environmental data that are recorded and reported at different spatial and temporal scales. In this study, we link health data as provided by the national Veterans Administration (VA) database with environmental data as provided by the National Climatic Data Center and National Aeronautics and Space Administration to study the effect of environment on DES.